Sea Of Ghosts

CHAPTER 4
TREASURE-HUNTERS

To Sister Briana Marks:

My name is not important. I am a jailer in Ethugra who has recently, and legally, been granted incarceration rights to a powerful psychic. Given this person’s value to your Guild, I would be glad to hand them over in return for a finder’s fee of two hundred thousand gilders. If this is agreeable, please have a Guild representative (yellow-grade only) meet me at Averley Plaza on the 30th HR. I will find her.

Faithfully,

A Friend

Granger stared at the letter. How could he send it now? Ianthe was more of a mystery to him than ever before. She knew things she couldn’t possibly have known: the slop drawer, the four hundred gilders. And yet she seemed blind to the most crucial information of all: the poisoned water, her own parentage. Every one of his instincts told him that her reaction to that last revelation was genuine. She hadn’t known he was her father.

Had Hana been telling the truth all along?

Or had they outwitted him again?

He cradled his head in his hands. She couldn’t have seen him put the money into his pocket. She couldn’t have known about Duka’s condition from hearing his sobs. So why hadn’t she known he was her father? Nothing made sense – not least her supposed ability to find trove. Psychics didn’t find treasure. The sea had no mind to read.

Granger folded up the letter and slid it down inside his sock. If Ianthe turned out to be valuable, he would send it, and if she didn’t, well, it might at least stop Creedy’s damn whaleskin galoshes from chaffing his ankle so much.

Ianthe ignored him for four days. Granger went about his duties in a workmanlike fashion, bringing his captives food and water and emptying the slop drawer. Ianthe kicked all their food into the brine before her mother had a chance to protest or even to thank Granger. But she drank the water and she allowed her mother to drink it too.

On the fifth day she said, ‘If you want me to find trove, you’ll have to let me out of here.’

‘Who says I want to find trove?’ Granger replied.

She threw the water jug at him.

Two more days passed.

On the seventh day of their incarceration he found Ianthe in an edgy, restless mood. She sat with her chin pressed against her knees, gripping the soles of her boots as though making a conscious effort to stop her coiled muscles from lashing out again. They had, at last, eaten their breakfasts and left the empty bowls for Granger to collect. He took this to be a small victory.

‘She wants to work with you,’ Hana said.

‘Does she? Was this her idea, or yours?’

Ianthe stared at the wall.

‘Take her out in your boat, she’ll find treasure.’

Granger shook his head. ‘I could lose my licence if anyone sees me.’

‘Then go at night,’ Hana said. ‘Her sight is good enough.’

It was bad enough being on the brine in daylight, but the thought of trawling Ethugra’s canal’s at night felt like a lead weight in his gut. ‘My boat leaks.’

‘Your friend’s boat doesn’t.’

Creedy scratched at the Gravediggers tattoo behind his thumb. ‘I don’t get it,’ he said. ‘She’s either psychic or she isn’t.’

Granger sat in the bow of the sergeant’s launch beside a tarpaulin that hid their dredging equipment – the lamps, ropes, nets and iron hooks Creedy had borrowed from another of his cousins. Stone facades and barred windows slipped by on either side, both above and below water. The seabed was about seven fathoms down here, and the honey-coloured water unusually clear, but Granger couldn’t see anything of worth in the flooded street below. Rubble. A torn net. Bones and paint cans. ‘Maybe it’s instinctual,’ he said.

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning, birds once used to migrate across the oceans. How did they navigate? What guided them across the endless wastes to the same roosting spots year after year? Or dragons… You’ve seen the way berserker dragons hunt the Drowned off the Losotan coast. They know where to dive and where to avoid.’

‘I once saw a dragon taken by an erokin samal,’ Creedy said. ‘Man, that was nasty.’

Granger shrugged. Maybe that wasn’t such a good example. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I can’t explain Ianthe’s talents yet. She might not be psychic, but she has something.’

Creedy shook his head in disapproval. ‘I know a con when I smell one, Colonel.’

A passenger boat puttered by, almost identical to the vessel Granger had taken out to Creedy’s place. This one was full of jailers’ wives back from the Averley Day Market, their wares piled between their knees, but it was as overcrowded as any other. Ethugran captains liked to pack them in. Long rays of sunlight slanted into the city from the west, turning the top stories of the buildings to gold.

Gloom had filled Halcine Canal by the time they reached Granger’s wharf. Creedy tied up, and then the two men climbed up the ramshackle stairs into Granger’s garret.

To keep Ianthe hidden, Granger looked out a spare whale-skin cloak from the storeroom: a sour old garment, hardened by long exposure to rain and brine spray. He felt sure she would complain.

She complained and raged and threw it on the floor. But when he made it clear she’d wear the cloak or remain inside, she snatched it back up and swept it fiercely about her shoulders. Creedy said nothing but he stared at Ianthe in a way that made Granger feel uncomfortable.

Shortly after sunset, the three treasure-hunters departed in Creedy’s launch. High cloud had drifted in from the south and veiled the dusk. There were no stars, but a half moon shone through the clouds like a faint illusion. Creedy manned the wheel while Granger swung a lantern from the bow to light their way. Ianthe told them to head to Francialle, and then she yanked her foul-smelling cloak over her face and buried her head in her knees. They left Halcine Canal and turned into Elm Canal and then Broughton Canal, before finally nudging the boat into the old Unmer district via the Rat Passage. Night deepened around them. Creedy cut the engine and took up his boat hook. ‘What now?’

‘She starts looking.’

They waited.

‘Ianthe?’

She gave a snort of irritation, then crawled over to the side of the boat and peered down into the water.

Granger exchanged a glance with his former sergeant. Creedy shook his head. It was impossible to see anything down there.

It began to rain, softly at first, and then harder. Water lanced down from the darkness, pulverizing the black brine and turning the reflections from Granger’s lantern into millions of flashing gilders. All around the old Ethugran prisons bore the onslaught. Water drummed their roofs and gargled down through gutter pipes. Drip after drip fell from the eaves and spattered bridges and stone pontoons, exploded against window ledges and doorsteps, trickled down through cracks and into the sodden heart of the old Unmer district. Rain beat the tarpaulin and crept down Granger’s neck and across his back. The air filled with the scent of wet earth, as though each droplet had carried with it the fabric of another land. Granger inhaled it deeply.

Creedy manoeuvred them through a sodden labyrinth of deep defiles, grunting softly as he pushed at the walls with his boat hook. Ianthe hung over the side, wrapped in silence under her cloak. Granger held up the lamp and swung it around him, revealing the massive walls that pinned them in on every side, the barred windows half submerged in brine, their ironwork scuffed by innumerable boat hooks. Occasionally they heard sobbing from the cells around them, but those noises were indistinct, drowned by the constant percussion of the rain.

Finally, Ianthe said, ‘Here.’

Creedy brought the boat to a stop.

‘Something metal,’ she replied. ‘Six fathoms down. Two yards that way.’ She pointed near the bow.

‘Trove?’ Granger peered into the water. He could see nothing but the reflection from his own lantern dancing in that blackness.

Ianthe turned away from the gunwale and sat down fiercely, jerking the cloak over her head like a cowl. ‘What do you think?’

Granger pulled on his gloves, mask and goggles. He picked up a dredging line – a long rope with a cluster of hooks at the end – and tossed it into the canal. The rope slid out through his fingers as the barbed anchor dropped into the depths. Four fathoms, five, six. Finally it settled on the bottom, and Granger pulled it towards him. He felt the hooks bump and scrape across the seabed, but they snagged nothing. He dragged the line in again, and repeated the process.

The rain came down.

On the third throw, Granger felt the line bite. He gave it a tug. Something heavy freed itself from the bottom. A noticeable weight. Carefully, he drew it up towards him.

It was a small clockwork machine about the size of a naval concussion shell – an engine, perhaps, or part of one. The device was roughly cuboid, fashioned from a peculiar green-blue alloy, and much heavier than it looked. Through several holes in the outer casing, Granger could see some complex mechanism inside: gears, tightly wound metal coils and bulbs of red glass. Four short, rubber-sheathed wires dangled from metal stubs welded to one of the object’s facets. Brine sluiced out as he turned it over.

‘What is it?’ Creedy asked.

Granger didn’t know.

‘Definitely Unmer.’ Creedy held out his hands. ‘Let’s have a look.’

The queer device made Granger feel uncomfortable, although he couldn’t say precisely why. Its weight seemed to change as he turned it over, and he thought he detected a faint hum coming from the glass bulbs, a resonance that he felt in his teeth. Did it retain a trace of Unmer sorcery? He emptied it of seawater and then passed it over to Creedy. Then he turned to Ianthe, who remained wrapped in the shadows of her cloak. ‘How did you know it was there?’ he asked.

She shrugged.

‘You can’t see anything in that murk.’

‘You can’t,’ she retorted.

Creedy adjusted the lens in his eye socket and examined the object. ‘I can get you a buyer for this,’ he said. ‘The metal itself might be worth a couple of hundred. If it does anything weird once it’s dried out, you can double that figure.’ He put it down. ‘Not exactly a gem lantern, but not a bad start.’

They searched the canals for hours. It rained constantly. Ianthe peered into the black water in silence. But was she actually using those vacant eyes to hunt for treasure, or was she using the mind behind them? Granger didn’t know. She couldn’t steer them; she could only gaze into that bitter void and hope to detect the glimmer of metal amidst the silt and rubble. Yet to Granger’s sight the canal water was as impenetrable as the grave. It frightened him because he did not know what they might discover. Not all Unmer artefacts were harmless.

On the outskirts of Francialle they pulled up a star-shaped pendant fastened to a long flat, razor-sharp chain. It would have cut into the skin of anyone who wore it, and yet Creedy insisted it had value. Handling it in his tough gloves, Granger felt the same uneasiness as before. It seemed to resist the movements of his hand, as though attracted or repulsed by some minute and invisible geography of the air. These queer sensations began to turn his stomach, so he flipped the thing to Creedy, who played with it and laughed. After that, the finds came more quickly. In Cannonade Canal they found a pair of metal goggles that allowed the wearer to see the waters as a virulent blue glow awash with threads of silver. By twisting the lenses one could change the colours of the illusion to yellow, black and green. Interesting, Granger conceded, but ultimately pointless. Shortly afterwards they dragged up a tangle of golden fibres that left him with a ringing sensation in his ears, although he heard no actual noise at all.

The canals continued to reveal their secrets: an old Unmer dragon harness brimming with needles; three hot glass spheres connected by wooden rods; a paint tin.

They threw the tin back, and moved on.

The rain stopped at dawn. The fresh smell of metal crept into the air with the first morning light. Overhead the sky began to fill with the subtle shades of yellow and purple. Tea-coloured vapour rose from the canals and hung between buildings in a soft ethereal scum. Only the brine itself stayed dark. Granger wanted to head back, but Creedy kept insisting they stay. ‘One more find and then we’ll go. Just one.’

In the heart of Francialle they manoeuvred the launch into a small square basin tucked in behind a massive prison block belonging to the Bower family, where Ianthe told them to stop again.

Granger rubbed his eyes. ‘What is it?’

Ianthe looked up from the water. ‘A sea-bottle.’

The two men exchanged a glance. The empire paid three thousand gilders for each ichusae removed from the ocean, but they were worth even more on the black market. Certain warlords had been known to use them as weapons.

This last treasure seemed determined to elude them. After a dozen attempts with the hooked line, Granger still hadn’t snagged the thing. He couldn’t see anything in the dark water but his own hideous face, the grey, paper-creased cheeks, the goggles like cavities in his skull. He abandoned the hooked line in favour of a claw, a tool more suitable for grabbing smooth objects. By manipulating two cords he could open and close the tool’s jaws like a pincer. It was tricky, but on his second try, he thought that the line became a little heavier.

Gently, he began to draw the line in. It snagged on something. He pulled harder.

Something underwater wrenched it back.

Granger reacted instinctively, dropping the line. Two yards of it whizzed across the bow wale, then came to a rest.

Creedy stood up. ‘Dragon?’

‘In Ethugra?’ Granger replied. There wasn’t space between these buildings to harbour such a monster. Whatever had taken the line was more likely to be much smaller: an Eellen, a Lux shark or thresher-fish, perhaps even one of the Drowned. ‘What do you see, Ianthe?’

The girl did not reply.

‘Ianthe?’

‘A Drowned boy,’ she replied. ‘He’s playing with you.’

Creedy lifted his boat hook. He walked over to the side of the boat and picked up the loose line in his other hand. ‘Little shit,’ he said, wrapping the rope around his gloved fist. ‘I’m going to make you breathe air.’ He gave the line a sudden, powerful, yank.

It didn’t budge.

Creedy let the line go slack. ‘Bastard’s snagged it on something.’

The line snapped taut, almost pulling Creedy into the canal. His unusually quick reactions saved him. With his feet planted square under the port strake, he dropped to a crouch, allowing the weight of the vessel itself to resist the force. The launch skimmed sideways across the pool, pushing a wave of black seawater before it, before thumping into the prison facade. Brine sloshed over the gunwales, over the tarpaulin, over Ianthe.

She cried out.

‘Hu-shan,’ Granger hissed the old Imperial curse. ‘Are you burned?’

Ianthe was flapping water from her whaleskin cloak.

‘Did it touch your skin?’

‘No.’

Creedy got to his feet, cursing, the line still wrapped around his fist. He untangled himself and then spun the line around one of the steel oarlocks on that side of the boat. Then he turned to Ianthe. ‘Drowned fucking boy?’ he snarled. ‘What was it? Shark? Rock-caster? Eellen?’ When she didn’t answer he raised the boat hook as if to strike her.

‘Sergeant,’ Granger said quietly.

Creedy halted, and lowered the weapon.

‘We’re going back,’ Granger said. ‘It’s getting lighter, and we have enough trove for now.’ He looked at the pile of artefacts heaped next to the wheel console: the engine, the pendant, the tangled wire, the dragon harness and the spheres. A thousand gilders’ worth of unfathomable rubbish. Even with Creedy’s half deducted, it was enough to feed his captives for several months. Or a down payment on a new boat. That had been his original plan, after all, and he shouldn’t forget it.

Creedy took the treasure away with him to find a buyer. Before he left, Granger offered to let him have the Unmer doll too. ‘No sense in keeping it here,’ he pointed out. But Creedy was strangely reluctant to accept.

‘Sell it later if you need to,’ he said. ‘I’m tired, I’m going home.’ He didn’t want to come up to Granger’s jail, and he didn’t want to wait at the jetty.

Granger returned Ianthe to her cell.

Hana looked up sleepily. ‘How did it go?’

‘She did well,’ Granger said.

‘She always does.’

Granger just nodded. He went back upstairs and opened the box in which he kept the doll. But the doll was missing. He wasn’t particularly surprised. He stood there for a long moment, wondering why he didn’t feel angrier at Creedy.

The sun was up by the time he went to bed, and the garret was already becoming uncomfortably hot. As he lay in his bunk, he thought about the treasure hunt. Granger himself had stared into those lightless canals and seen nothing at all. How had Ianthe done it? Uncanny vision did not explain how she’d known about Duka, the drawer and the four hundred gilders. No matter how many different possibilities went through his head, he couldn’t figure out the answer. His gut told him that his captives were lying.

She can’t read minds.

If that was so, then why did Hana want to keep her daughter from the Haurstaf?

The Haurstaf will murder her.

Granger frowned. If Ianthe was psychic, the Guild would embrace her. And if she truly possessed nothing more than heightened physical senses, she posed no threat to them. They might or might not use her, but they had no reason to harm her.

He stared at the ceiling, watching sunlight ripple across the joists. At this hour of the morning the mists would have burned off Halcine Canal, and the water would be shining like a vein of gold.

Perhaps he was approaching this from the wrong direction?

What if she was completely normal – not psychic or special in any way? Granger’s own grandmother – Ianthe’s great-grandmother – had come from Awl without a glimmer of the telepathic ability so entrenched in her race. There had been nothing there for Ianthe to inherit. Could an ordinary fifteen-year-old girl have found a way to beat the Haurstaf at their own game? What if her strange powers were not merely a quirk of nature, that one-in-a-million mutation that appeared in the blood of western women, but rather the result of something that could be attained by anyone? Something sorcerous?

An Unmer artefact.

Granger sat upright in his cot. That made a lot of sense. Suppose Ianthe had unearthed some rare treasure – a pendant, ring or pin that granted her these inhuman abilities? The Haurstaf would certainly not flinch from murder to keep it a secret. Emperor Hu could use such an object to challenge the Guild of Psychics and break their monopoly of power. The Haurstaf’s very existence would be threatened. If such an object existed, it would be worth more to the empire than a fleet of battleships.

A magic pendant, ring or pin?

Was Ianthe hiding it somewhere on her body even now?

He jumped out of bed, threw on his galoshes and stormed downstairs.

Ianthe was already asleep, curled up on her pallet, but Hana lifted her head, looked up at him and smiled. That smile disarmed him now, as it had all those years ago. She became the same young woman he’d known in Weaverbrook, and for an awful moment he didn’t know if he could do what he’d come down here to do. But then he understood the purpose behind her smile. She was tricking him, making a fool of a brine-rotten old jailer. His anger stirred again.

‘Wake her,’ he said.

Hana frowned.

‘I said, wake her.’

For a moment Hana looked uncertain, but then she shook her daughter awake.

‘Where is it?’ Granger asked the girl.

‘Where is what?’ Hana replied.

‘I’m not going to play any more games with you. Show it to me.’

Mother and daughter looked at each other. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Hana said.

‘All right.’ Granger let out a sigh. ‘Strip.’

‘What?’ Hana said. Ianthe looked suddenly fearful.

‘Strip,’ Granger repeated to Ianthe. ‘Take off your clothes and hand them over.’

Hana moved between Granger and their daughter. ‘Why are you doing this?’

Granger felt his face fill with blood. ‘I’m not going to harm you,’ he said through a clenched jaw. ‘But if you don’t give me the artefact right now, I’ll find it myself. Even if that means stripping you naked here and now.’

Ianthe let out a sob. ‘I told you what he’s like,’ she cried. ‘He’s no better than the others.’

‘Don’t do this, Tom. Please.’

‘Then tell her to do as I say.’

Hana shook her head incredulously. ‘You think she stole something?’

He said nothing.

‘I have no idea what you think she’s taken, but you are not laying one finger on her.’

Granger grabbed Hana by the arm and dragged her away from the girl. Ianthe gasped and scrambled away from him, her eyes wide with fear. He reached for her, but she shrieked and kicked out wildly. Her boot caught his shoulder, causing his old wound to flare in pain. He grunted and surged forward, grabbing her arms to pin her up against the wall. She spat in his face.

‘Stop it,’ Hana yelled.

Granger was shaking the girl. ‘What is it?’ he said. ‘A ring? A pendant? Show it to me.’

Hana seized him by the neck and head. She was clinging to his back, trying to pull him away, her fingers scrabbling across his sweating face. Ianthe screamed. Granger turned and slammed himself, and Hana, against the wall, again and again until he felt her grip relax. His chest tightened with pain, but he ignored it. He tore her arms loose and pushed her away from him.

Now he was furious. ‘Where is it?’

‘She doesn’t have anything like that,’ Hana sobbed.

‘Then what is it? How does she know the things she does?’

‘She can see through the eyes of others.’

Granger stopped. He was breathing heavily, his lungs straining to suck in air. His shoulder throbbed where the girl had kicked it.

Hana was sobbing. ‘She knew about your money because you saw it,’ she said, ‘and she knew what your friend said because you heard him say it. Inny was born with a…’ For a moment she seemed to struggle to find the right word. ‘I suppose it’s a gift,’ she said at last. ‘She can only see and hear things that other people see and hear. It’s the same with smell and touch – she tunes into their senses. But she can’t read their thoughts any more than you or I can.’

A brine mutation? Granger considered this. She didn’t see me fill the jug with poison because it was dark?

‘What about the trove?’ he demanded

‘The Drowned have eyes too,’ Hana retorted, ‘and their vision is attuned to the gloom. They can see better than any human can. You never notice them, but they’re down there. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands.’

Disassociated perception? Given the right heritage, one in a million conceptions might produce a psychic child, but Granger had never heard of a condition like this – not in Awl, not anywhere. His anger egged him to argue with her, to beat the truth from her. He was sick of being lied to. And yet Hana’s comment explained everything. ‘She can see through my eyes,’ he said, ‘listen through my ears? Even when I’m somewhere else?’

‘You could be on the other side of the world.’

‘And she can do this trick with anyone?’

‘Almost any living thing.’

‘Haurstaf?’

Hana nodded.

Now Granger understood why she was such a threat to the Guild of Psychics. The Haurstaf openly sold their powers to every warlord who could afford them. In battles it was not uncommon to find telepaths on both sides, each reporting on the other’s position. Emperor Hu might rage at Sister Marks, cursing both their expense and their infuriating neutrality, but he was helpless to act against the Guild. If his enemies used their services then so must he.

But if Ianthe could sneak behind the eyes and ears of anyone she chose to, she would be the perfect spy. There could be no secrets while she lived, not even among the Haurstaf themselves. She was worth more to the empire than a hundred psychics. Surveillance was an essential expedient of control. And Ianthe’s talents could be turned against anyone.

‘Almost any living thing,’ Hana repeated. ‘But there is one person whose eyes she cannot see through and whose ears she can’t hear through.’

‘Who?’

‘Herself,’ Hana said. ‘Your daughter is deaf and blind.’